


Growing Pains

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [83]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Humor, Kid Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitey.  But not the way you're thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series.

It's a wonder she can steer, Buffy thinks, what with the twin thunderclouds taking up all the room in the car. Bill in the back seat, wrapped in furious, lip-quivering silence. Not fighting back tears, absolutely not. Spike slouched beside her in the front seat, jaw clenched, eyes stony. Not saying anything, because if he does, he'll start yelling.

If she looks in the rearview mirror, it's only her.

_"We all realize Bill is a child with...special needs," Mrs. Dougherty says, with a significant look at the blackout curtains lining the tall classroom windows. "And under California law, the school district is obliged to meet those needs." She peers over the rims of her cats-eye glasses, impaling Bill's parents with her pale blue gaze. "But there are limits."_

And Spike's reached his. "Inside," he snarls, as they pull into the driveway.

His son gives him a mute, rebellious glare, but when Buffy adds, "Now, Bill," in that cool, calm, I'm-very-disappointed-in-you voice her own mother used to guilt-gut her with, he crumples. This is unfamiliar territory; usually it's his sister Connie leaving a trail of well-meant carnage in her wake. But he's totally blown his sister out of the water today, and he knows it. Hand in pockets, hoodie tugged over his head, Bill scoots for the front porch. Quick like a bunny, outracing the sun. Part of her is always counting.

(Three minutes, fourteen seconds before he really starts to charbroil. Up from three minutes, two seconds, last year.)

Spike swings out of the Jeep and strolls across the lawn with gunfighter's deliberation. (Twelve minutes, forty-three seconds.) Maybe it's some stupid vampire dominance thing. Or maybe he's stalling for time, trying to rein in his temper. If he had his way, he'd be sending Bill into the woods, or the back yard, anyway, to cut him a switch. Which isn't a vampire thing, just what his own father would have done to him, absent a convenient buggy whip. Apparently tough love was a lot tougher in the 1860s.

She really hopes they can get inside without making a scene, but this is Spike, after all, and he's got to get his I-told-you-sos in. Just short of the porch he turns the scowl on her. "Knew this was coming. Never would've happened if you'd let me - "

"Can we do this later?" She hears the same clipped, dismissive note she used to hear in her father's voice when she or Dawn walked in on a parental squabble, and winces. She digs the keys out of her purse, crosses the cool, shady expanse of porch, and opens the front door. Bill's shoulders stiffen under her hand as she herds him inside.

Spike looks at her, mouth tight, ignoring the faint wisps of smoke beginning to rise from his hair and exposed skin. "Blood will out, Slayer. All I'm saying."

She knows that. It's not like she can forget that her sweet, serious, thinky little boy is something more than that. (And where he got the thinky bits from, God only knows; sometimes she feels like she's given birth to a miniature Owen Thurman.) Not when the refrigerator's stocked with pig's blood, and part of her is always counting. Sometimes she hates the other part of her, the part that kind of wishes she could forget, and pretend her son was just like all the other boys - just for a minute, just for a day. Even a minute feels like betrayal. But is it so awful to want to see something of _her_, blood of her blood, in Bill, too?

"Sit," Spike orders, and Bill marches over to the couch like he's on his way to the firing squad. He plunks himself down in the middle, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. A muscle in Spike's forearm twitches. "What've you got to say for yourself?"

Bill stares at the grubby toes of his sneakers.

"Honey, we've talked about this," Buffy says, dropping to her haunches so she can look him in the unwilling eye. "Why did you do it?" She wants there to be a reason - a normal eleven-year-old boy reason. Anything except _I was hungry._

Her son shakes tousled blond curls (already darkening to Spike's sandy brown) out of stormy grey eyes and looks up at her. He totally needs a haircut. Defiance there, and a beseeching misery, and something else, something hiding. Guilt? She can't tell. She knows Spike's limits, but in some ways? Her son's are still a mystery.

Silence stretches out like cheap fairground taffy. "I dunno," Bill says at last.

"You bloody well know why," Spike says, in the black velvet rumble that's more dangerous than all his stomping and yelling. "The only question's whether you're going to fess up and take your whipping like a man, or whether I beat it out of you."

Both sets of eyes are starting to fizz with gold, and that's Not A Good Sign. Buffy glares at Spike and snatches at the fraying edges of her patience before they shred away entirely. She grabs Bill's arms, squeezing maybe a little too tightly. "Bill. I have just spent three solid hours groveling to your teacher, and the principal, and the school psychiatrist. Considering I'm the one who still has to apologize to Mrs. Nunez and explain why my son _bit_ her daughter, I think you can do a little better than 'I don't know.' Did you and Lupe get into a fight?"

"We weren't fighting!" The set of Bill's jaw is the boy-soft mirror of his father's. "Everyone keeps saying that and we weren't! I wasn't even mad at her and it's not _fair!_"

"Bill," she says. "Bill, listen! You could have hurt Lupe very badly. You could have - you remember what happened to the puppy, don't you? If you weren't angry with her - "

He bursts into noisy, exhausted tears, and Buffy fights off a mixture of exasperation and _my poor little baby!_ "She was sus-sus-susposed to like it!" Bill sobs, a bundle of explosive pre-adolescent anguish. "You like it when Daddy bites you!"

Buffy collapses to her knees with a startled whoosh of breath. Spike's doing a really good goldfish impression. "Oh, honey," she says at last, not sure if she should yell or laugh or just die of embarrassment. "Daddy never bites me without asking first." _I never inhaled, Officer!_ "Besides, when Daddy bites me it's a... a special grown-up kind of biting."

Bill flings his arms around her neck and buries his wet snotty face in her shoulder, which he's been too old to do for years now. "I didn't mean to!" he wails. "I thought I could do it right!"

Spike drops down onto the couch, laying a hand on his son's shoulders. "Bloody hell," he mutters, maybe remembering his own less than successful adventures in pigtail dipping. "Couldn't you have just kissed the bird?"

"No." Bill draws himself up in snuffly disdain. "Kissing is _yucky!_"

"Gets less so," Spike assures him.

Their son looks unconvinced. Buffy reaches out and cups one tearstained cheek. "Tell you what. No ferret blood for a week. No Gameboy for a month. And no more biting girls until after you don't think kissing is yucky. Way after." She raises a meaningful eyebrow at Spike. There's, like, six or seven Talks indicated here, and she's really, really glad she's not the parental unit with fangs. "Right now you go to your room and think about how you want to tell Lupe you're sorry."

"Okay," Bill sighs. He gets up, scrubs a hand across his nose, and foot-drags off in the direction of his room. At the foot of the stairs he looks back and brightens a little. "I think she still likes me," he says hopefully. "She kicked me in the knee."

Like father, like son. Buffy's not sure whether to congratulate Lupe Nunez on a conquest or advise her to run like hell. Spike slides off the couch to sit beside her on the floor, a bemused little grin on his face.

"Thought she'd _like_ it," he says. "Fancy."

There's out and out wonder in his voice, and Buffy's pretty sure this is some big significant Thing that not being a vampire, she completely doesn't get. But that's OK. This terra is pretty incognita for both of them. She settles into the curve of his shoulder and takes his hand. His fingers close around hers, cool and strong, and she smiles. "It's not totally unheard of."

END


End file.
